Mixed Feelings (Empathy in the PPNW Book 1) (8 page)

“Long time!” Polly said,
already ringing me up.

I shrugged.
“Hard day, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have made the drive.”

“Well, that makes me feel
special,” she said, an edge of fake insult in her tone. I could tell, even
without my psychic power, that she wasn’t really bothered, but I made up for
the accidental insult with a fat tip. I took a narrow two-top in the corner for
myself and chowed down on my unhealthy delights, feeling all the better for it.
After I finished, I realized that, if things got any crazier, I might not make
it out this way again any time soon.

Just to be safe, I ordered
five more of the heart-stoppers to go, cleaning them out.

I was strapping the box into
my passenger seat—you can never be too cautious when protecting such
valuable treasure as donuts—when my phone rang.

“
Hello?
” I answered without looking
at the number on the screen.

“I have the address of your
kidnapping.” I blinked, my brain briefly too far gone in a glaze high to know
what the silky voice was talking about, or who it belonged to. Evadne pressed
on without waiting for me to acknowledge her, detailing an address that, to my
surprise, was in the same city. I jumped, trying to find something write on. “Merrin
will bring your trinket by later and we will be settled, is that understood?”

“
Yeah. Wait, trinket?
” I asked, still digging through my glovebox for
something to write the quickly fading address on before my mind erased it.
Evadne had already hung up, so I let the phone fall into the footwell of my car
while I gave up on finding a clean piece of paper and scribbled directly onto
the donut box.

“
Crazy blue-
haired hottie,” I groused, flipping
on
the dome light to see what I'd scrawled. My writing
was near
ly
illegible, but I was able to
punch it into my phone to see where I’d be telling Chloe to meet me.

“Well, that’s convenient.”
My p
hone claimed it would take me less than ten minutes to
arrive at my destination. It was nearly seven-forty, but I figured Chloe could
make it out my way if I got hold of her quickly enough. A revelation hit me as
just before I hit the call button and I sat in the quiet car staring at her
smiling face on the screen.
Chloe could do wonders with
an insurance company and make a damned fine cup of tea, but she wouldn’t be any
help
in stopping a kidnapping.
Chloe was, as she’d put it,
just my assistant; what good was she at something like this?

I couldn’
t help anyone
alone, though, regardless of how close I
happened to be. Somehow I didn’t think knocking on the door of someone’s house
and politely informing them that their child was about to be kidnapped was
going to go well. I considered calling the police but instantly realized that
was an even
stupider
idea than calling Chloe or
trying to warn the parents.

So what the hell was I
supposed to do?

When I realized what my only
option was, I let out a resigned groan.
I needed the big guns.
Rather, I needed a werewolf
with
big guns. I
rubbed
my temples, then
called
Mel. To my surprise, he answered on the first ring.

“
News?
”

“
Uh.
” I needed a second to adjust; I had expected him to answer with some
crude come
-on.
“I just got the address of
the supposed kidnapping. It’s in Bellevue. I’m on my way there now. I was going
to call Chloe but I figured you’d be more helpful. I’m assuming you can do more
than howl at the moon.”

“Please,” he spat. “Send me
the address and I’ll be right there. Where are you?”

“Nearly there, actually. I
was already in the area.”

“
Shit,
” Mel growled. There
w
as an edge of an
actual
growl to it and my stomach did a
flip-flop. Since it was currently stuffed to the brim with donuts, it was a
heavy, unpleasant feeling. “
Don
’t go near the place until I
get there. I’
ll
—I know someone in the
Bellevue PD. I’ll send her there. Don’t be a hero.”

“Not something you have to
worry about with me. Just hurry. Merrin said eight and it’s closing in fast.”

“Already in the car,”
Mel
said
, hanging up. My headset went dead and I glanced at my
phone on the seat as if it could answer my questions about when, exactly,
Mel
had become useful and
heroic
. This wasn’t a side of him I had considered possible.

I
paused at the first stop sign I came across, punching
the address I’d been given into my phone and sending it on its way to Mel. I
got a honk as I hit send, but I’d rather be honked at than accidentally crash
myself into a tree because I’d been texting.

I planned on parking far down
the street, but the c
loser I got
,
the more I realized that was
unlikely. The street was packed with cars and
,
in an ironic twist of fate that never happened when I was, say,
visiting a tiny vegan donut shop, I found parking right in front of the
apartment building. It was run
-
down, though not as if it was
neglected, just a little worse for wear. There were maybe twelve units in
total. The paint was faded here and there and the sidewalks around it had seen
better days, but the foliage was well-kept and the windows actually looked new.
It matched the address that Evadne had given me.

“
Dammit,
” I said, darting across the other lane to take the
spot, despite my misgivings. I was technically parked backwards, but I wasn’t
planning on being there long, so I decided not to worry about it.

I locked my doors,
hunkered down in my seat, and
tried not to be noticed by anything that looked like it wanted to kidnap small
children. I sat in silence for ten minutes, too nervous to even contemplate
digging into my box of donuts. The closest thing I saw to a kidnapper was a
hipster with a giant mustache
striding by
.
He looked
harmless, but I decided not to trust him anyway, just to be thorough.

As was quickly becoming its
habit, the universe decided to throw me a curveball.
I was still hunched down in my seat, my gaze darting between my side
mirrors, the front window, and out toward the apartment building, when I felt a
peculiar emotional signature coming from far off to my left. It wasn’t one I’d
ever felt before, so I couldn’t immediately recognize what the emotions meant.
They felt liquid, thick and aggressive in a way that made me rub my hands over
my arms as if I could wipe them away.

When I turned to see what
exactly I was feeling, I found myself looking at a man. He was approaching the
apartment building across the grass and the closer he got, the more I started
to pull back, considering moving to sit in the passenger seat or getting out of
the car and running away altogether.

Whatever he was feeling, my
empathy was drowning in it, sucking under the thick, syrupy weight. I took a
shaky breath and closed my eyes as I tried to build up my shields to block it
out. Within a few seconds, I felt stronger, more aware of my own body and not
just of how it felt to be near the creature outside. I opened my eyes, focused
on him again, and tried to apply everything I’d ever learned from cop dramas on
TV. Pay attention to details, notice the physical stuff, remember things I
could pass on to Mel if necessary.

From my place
slouched
in my seat, he looked tall, reedy, like he was habitually
underfed. His hair was pale, looking almost white even in the dark, and his
features were shadowed, maybe a little gaunt. Despite the temperature outside,
he was dressed in only jeans and a button-down long-sleeved shirt. Just the
idea of standing out there in the cold without a heavy jacket made me uncomfortable.
Shaking my head, I let out a small, unhappy sound of disgust.

As soon as I did, he tensed,
perking up to look around as if he’d heard me. I pressed my hands over my
mouth, terrified he’d detected me and was, at any moment, going to explode out
of his skin into some horrid bat creature and fly across the distance between
us to rip off my head. His gaze passed over my car but, to my surprise, he
didn’t seem to notice me. Seconds passed like eons
,
and when his shoulders relaxed and he shifted his footing, I let out my
breath as quietly as I could, thanking the stars that I was still alive.

Where the hell was Mel?

Come to think of it, what the
hell was this person-shaped creature even doing? I’d expected, should I run
afoul of something, that it would spring into action, phasing through a wall or
teleporting instantly into a home and reappearing seconds later with a stolen
child in its arms. This thing, whatever it was, just stood there,
almost
like he was waiting for someone. Maybe I had it all
wrong and this guy was harmless, unrelated to the kidnapping. Maybe it was the
hipster with the ‘stache I needed to be worried about, after all.

Taking a deep breath, I bit
my lip and considered my options. Since none of them involved me getting out of
the car, I figured I had only one way to satisfy my curiosity.

I extended my empathy toward
the creature, reasoning with my fear about what I was trying. I’m not a cat, I
figured; in fact, I don’t even like the furry little bastards.
But a
s sirens started to wail off in the distance and the
creature with the liquid emotions turned to deliberately catch my eye, I
considered that, while curiosity might not kill me, it could definitely rough
me up.

Chapter Seven

I woke up in the car with a
feeling like someone had driven a railroad spike through my sinuses and
straight to the back of my brain. I was slumped over the steering wheel and
something was tapping at my left ear with a sledgehammer. I groaned,
shifting
my gaze to the window.

Light blazed and, for an
instant, I was sure someone had lit two road flares and jabbed them against my
eyeballs. The sudden brightness was unbearable, swamping my entire nervous
system. I shoved at the door, just barely able to aim my impending vomit
outside the car. The violent heaving of my stomach did nothing positive to the
chaotic destruction eating away at my brain and I was distantly aware that I
was whimpering. When my body finally calmed, I didn’t bother attempt
ing
to sit up straight and some small part of me realized
that I would have fallen right out of the car if the seatbelt hadn’t been there
to stop me.

“Ms. Arthur?” a soft voice
asked. I grunted in response but didn’t have the fortitude yet to actually see
what or who was questioning me. I couldn’t feel anything except my own pain and
I noticed after a moment that I was weeping. What the hell had happened?

“Gwen? Can you hear me?”

My eyes were closed but that
didn’t stop the swarm of angry bees going to town on my eyeballs. I felt a
warm, gloved hand on my chin and my head lifted slowly. A light shined into my
eyes, blinding me to details, but I took a deep breath of the scent of feminine
soap. When she let my lids droop, I cracked an eye open on my own and saw a
blurry, face-shaped blob. Whimpering, I let my eye close again and felt
something soft come up to wipe across my mouth.

A radio squawked painfully
next to my brain and the person tending me responded in cop-speak before
dialing down the volume. I shifted, trying to turn myself over to lapse back
into unconsciousness. Her now-bare hand rolled my face back toward her and she
pushed one of my eyes open.

“No, you can’
t sleep. I don
’t know what’s wrong with
you.” Gently cradling my head with one hand, she felt around my jaw and cheeks.
On the surface, it wasn’t a bad touch
,
but it
seemed to aggravate something in my brain. Distantly, I realized it wasn’t just
me in my head anymore. Something else had surfaced in her presence, pounding at
my skull from inside. I was still crying. She kept talking as she inspected me.
I wasn’t paying attention, though it was keeping me conscious; her voice was
soothing but the thing in my brain was angry and fighting her, trying to drag
me back down into darkness. Time passed as she felt around my body for injuries
and checked the seat and car for blood, talking all the while.

“If we need to
, I
can call an ambulance and we’ll get you checked out
proper. I have a bit of first aid training and you don’t seem to have a
concussion, though
. No injuries I can find
.
Honestly, if I could smell even a bit of alcohol on
you, I’d guess you had the worst hangover I’ve ever come across.” She leaned a
hip on my seat next to my leg, facing me as her hands slid gently up my face,
fingertips starting at my jaw and ending in my hair. “My name is Amy, and I
wish we could have met under better circumstances. Now, breathe with me, Gwen.”